Film review: Speed Racer, What Happens in Vegas, Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden, Honeydripper | Arts

Speed Racer

Tatsuo Yoshika's 1960s classic receives a slick remodelling here from Andy and Larry Wachowski, the guys behind The Matrix. Young driver Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch) discovers a dastardly race-fixing scheme run by industry moguls Royalton Industries - a company he has recently slighted by refusing a gigantic sponsorship offer so that he can stay driving his spectacular vehicle, the Mach 5. Royalton vow that Speed Racer and the Mach 5 will never race again, and in order to defy them, Speed will have to take part in the dreaded Crucible Race (which claimed the life of his brother Rex many years ago) supported only by his father Pops Racer (John Goodman), his girlfriend Trixie (Christina Ricci) and an unlikely ally in his rival, the mysterious driver X. It's a real feel-good, finely-tuned, swishy blockbuster, with sensational visuals.
PG, 129 mins

Honeydripper

The dawn of rock 'n' roll is the ostensible subject of John Sayles's movie - albeit a fictionalised dawn. It tells the story of Sonny Blake (Gary Clark Jnr, pitching it somewhere between Chuck Berry, Ike Turner and Little Richard), a guitar-playing genius who rides the railroads until he hops off in Harmony, Alabama one day and helps rescue the fortunes of a rundown roadhouse named the Honeydripper, run by a boogie-woogie pianist named Tyrone Purvis (Danny Glover). The tale is fabled and folkloric, knotting together all kinds of histories of the South - cotton plantations, religion, oppression and good ol' rock 'n' roll. Sadly, though, the film never feels comfortable in its own skin - the plot is just too hokey, the dialogue too awkward and the pace too slow.
PG, 123 mins

Nim's Island

This adaptation of Wendy Orr's charming novel is a bit of an odd fish. As Nim - a motherless young girl living on an island with her marine-biologist father who seeks solace in her favourite literary creation (an action hero named Alex Rover) - Abigail Breslin is as heart-melting as ever. And her father Jack (Gerard Butler) is thoroughly acceptable and indeed believable. But the movie stumbles a little with the appointment of Jodie Foster as the agoraphobic author of the Alex Rover books - a semi-hermit who receives the email a desperate Nim sends to her hero when her father is lost at sea. As capable as Foster undoubtedly is, her appearance only reminds us that it would be jolly nice to see her play a role in which she had to pull an expression that did not convey 'uptight'. Still, a nice, friendly little movie.
PG, 96 mins

Happy-go-lucky

After the dour tale of Vera Drake, Happy-Go-Lucky is not altogether what one expects from Mike Leigh. Here we have perhaps the most crowd-pleasing, entertaining film of his career: Poppy (Sally Hawkins) is a London schoolteacher, irrepressible, colourfully-dressed and infused with a spirited optimism. She lives with her best friend, takes tango classes, helps the homeless and spreads cheer wherever she goes. When her bike is stolen, she begins driving lessons with the considerably more uptight Scott (Eddie Marsan) and their repeated clashes make for much of the narrative. Poppy is initially a startling character - so jinglingly happy that one wonders first whether one can survive two hours in her company, and second whether beneath all that chirp and chatter she might have some terrible secret. She doesn't. And despite all this, the film loses nothing of its fundamental Mike Leigh-ness. It's still rich and vivid and sinewy - a film that feels very much alive.
15, 118 mins

Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?

The difficulty for Morgan Spurlock was surely: where on earth could he go after Supersize Me, his brilliantly simple and impressive cinematic debut that dealt with the dangers of fast food? The answer, it seems, is to the Middle East. Spurlock sets off on a journey to find not only enemy number one, Osama Bin Laden, but also to see first-hand the part of the world where the bogeymen supposedly dwell in the wake of 9/11. Not surprisingly, he finds that the people of Egypt, Morocco, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan are, by and large, rather nice and not all hijackers and militants. Spurlock's ambition here, one assumes, is to display this fact to the average cinema-goer rather than to those who have watched the numerous documentaries and fictional accounts of life in the region released recently - in the same way that many people didn't really need to know that existing only on McDonald's probably wasn't great for one's health. It's admirable stuff, but the difference this time is that Spurlock offers little political fire, just a tour of the world's hotspots.
PG, 93 mins

Made of Honour

Finding a new spin on the wedding romcom can be a difficult task, but Sony has (sort of) triumphed with this tale of a charming, successful lady-killer named Tom (Patrick Dempsey) who realises that his best friend, the fragrant Claire (Michelle Monaghan), is in fact the love of his life. Sadly, the realisation thuds home at the precise moment when Claire is embarking upon a whirlwind holiday romance in Scotland, returning home with a ring on her finger and plans to appoint Tom as her 'maid' of honour. Sure, the ensuing 'who will get the gal?' shenanigans that follow have a rather predictable flavour, but it's a sparky, intelligent cast - and everyone needs a little wedding romcom in their lives sometimes, right?
12A, 101 mins

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Here we go again into familiar Judd Apatow territory with another of his productions telling the tale of some laid-back slacker dude who's trying to woo the girl, but is cursed by a lack of cheekbones and pectoral muscles. Only this time it's in Hawaii. Our hero is Peter (Jason Segel), who composes music for a TV cop drama and for five beautiful years dated the show's star Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell). Until she dumped him. And started dating a rock-star, Aldous Snow (Russell Brand). Now they are all, by some terrible freakish chance, holidaying on the same island. This is a very modern break-up movie - Peter, we learn, is not short of offers, including the hotel receptionist Rachel (Mila Kunis), but his heart only belongs to Sarah. Or does it? It's hard not to be charmed by the honesty and awkwardness of the gawky Apatow school, but it might, at some point soon, be time to alter the hottie-and-the-dough-faced-boy pairings, which are starting to wear a tad thin.
15, 112 mins

What Happens in Vegas

All the goofy, mismatched romcom pairings that Hollywood has willed to work over the last few years may now be forgiven as Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher unite to form what seems like a natural comedy dreamteam. Joy (Diaz) and Jack (Kutcher) both arrive in Vegas in a rather fragile state - she newly boyfriendless, he freshly jobless - and proceed first to get royally drunk, and second to get married, unintentionally. When Jack then wins big on the slot machines (using money lent to him by Joy) the two of them separately embark on a sequence of cunning plans and contortions in an effort to lay individual claim to the loot. Not altogether shockingly, this whole fandango leads them circuitously into one another's arms. It's froth, of course - pure sugar-whipped confection - but the plot has an appealing simplicity, Vegas is suitably bonkers, and Diaz and Kutcher really do bring a certain zing to the screen.
12A, 99 mins

Tovarisch, I am Not
Dead

For 25 years, Dr Garri Urban has been trying to discover whether any members of his family survived the Holocaust, and at the same time attempting to obtain evidence that they were imprisoned by the Soviets prior to being sent to the concentration camps. His search has gained momentum since locating his brother in Israel, and soon he will be reunited with his former fiancee, who was jailed for 10 years as punishment for their relationship. This is of course a remarkable tale, and here it is rendered all the more extraordinary by the fact that the documentary has been made by Dr Urban's son, Stuart, who has been recording his father's search for the last 14 years. It makes for sensitive and intensely emotional telling.
12A, 85 mins

Persepolis

Based on the graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi, and directed by the author in tandem with Vincent Paronnaud, there is a real sense of elegance and towering greatness to this animated autobiographical coming-of-age story. Animation, in recent times, has come to mean the kapow and zap of the brashly-hued movies that Pixar and co produce, but here we have a flat, sombre-coloured depiction of the streets of Iran, where Satrapi grew up in the time of revolution. Voices are provided by Chiara Mastroianni as the young Satrapi, Catherine Deneuve as her mother and Danielle Darrieux as her grandmother - a wise, quick-witted woman who embodies the movie's feminist heart. As the revolution rages, Satrapi's family sends her off to the safety of Vienna, where she enjoys the freedoms of the West but pines for her home. Her decision as to whether or not to return to Iran is the central conflict of the film, though the mood never turns mawkish. Movies of this calibre and boldness come along rarely, and serve to remind us of the incredible possibilities and subtleties that film can allow. An absolute gem.
12A, 95 mins

In Bruges

Racist dwarves, wisecracking hitmen, elephantine American tourists, the camp cutesiness of mediaeval Bruges - Martin McDonagh's self-directed script is abundant (indeed, over-abundant) with scraps of Tarantino, shards of Ritchie and a soupcon of Private Eye. The film's fun, though, and it's a pleasure to see Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes having such a murderously good time. The plot? Two Irish contract killers are sent to Bruges to lie low after a job goes messily wrong. Why Bruges? Because Harry, the Essex crimelord (Fiennes), loved it when he was a kid and thinks it might make a terminal treat for Ray (Farrell). The tone's uneven - what should be cheerfully amoral hinges on something truly nasty - but there are plenty of good jokes here.
18, 107 mins

Joy Division

In the wake of last year's mesmerising Control comes this documentary by Grant Gee about the magnificent and hugely influential Manchester band led by Ian Curtis, who killed himself at the age of just 23. With appearances by the late Tony Wilson (who founded Factory Records), Curtis's former bandmates Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris (who would of course go on to form New Order), his lover Annik Honore, and contributions from Touching at a Distance (the book written by his widow Deborah), it makes a fine stablemate for Control. Rather than a mere portrait of a talented but troubled young man, Gee offers us a moving picture of Curtis's city in the late 1970s and early Eighties, when Manchester - a once-proud centre of industry - had grown stagnant and depressed.
15, 93 mins

Stop-Loss

Kimberley Pierce's last movie, Boys Don't Cry, was a tremendous success, feted by audiences, critics and Oscar judges alike. Her follow-up - a study of American armed forces on duty and at play - is every bit as powerful. We begin with a troop of white-picketed, bravado-rich boys who are left traumatised by a casualty-heavy checkpoint shoot-out in Tikrit. Soon after, the group, led by Staff Sgt Brandon King (Ryan Philippe), is relieved to be sent home - in King's and best buddy Steve's (Channing Tatum) case, to Texas. But when King learns that he must return to Iraq, he goes AWOL, driving cross-country, destinationless, with Steve's fiancee (Abbie Cornish) by his side. That the movie here becomes a little confused and purposeless may to some appear a fault, but in many ways its rambling quality is exactly its point: there are no easy answers in war, and no happy, neatly-tied endings. An intensely forceful film, in which Philippe and Cornish are particularly impressive.
15, 113 mins